The day after the day of thanks, the thanks continue to roll.
I have extra servings of gratitude for the guest bloggers who gave me a respite from the day-to-day task of posting. Joanne, Sherrilee, Renee, tim, Jim and Madislandgirl created a peaceful open space so I could take the time to visit my geographically distant, much loved, well aged parents.
Online work is famously portable, but my folks live in a backwater section of the Internet, near the intersection of Windows 95 Street and Dial-Up Avenue. I could have continued the blog from there but it would have been a slow, brutal chore. Also, one of the things you should not have to endure in your ‘80s is to wonder why your 55-year-old kid still shuts himself away in a room for hours at a time, working on God Knows What. Instead, I got to hang out with them, completing Autumn chores around the house (gathering leaves, cleaning bird baths, etc.), having meals together and watching several different flavors of CSI on TV. No wonder our senior citizens are so worried. The world is full of brutal murderers and crazed serial killers!
And now comes Black Friday, the day when Common Sense gets a knife in the back from yet another variety of CSI, a miserable little wretch everybody known as the Consumer Spending Index. This CSI used to put up impressive numbers every Day After Turkey Day, but following a string of disappointing years he’s got the cold desperate look of a guy down to his last screaming headline. Door Buster Deals! Low Price Shockers! Nothing is too outrageous. The plan is audacity itself – to compel hard working people who already have the day off and could remain in bed until noon to get up in the middle of the night instead, to swarm over department stores for unbelievable bargains. Even Discount Tires has a Black Friday special, which has got me wondering if my wife would prefer her packages under the tree to have a directional or asymmetrical tread pattern.
And it works! This morning just after 2 am I gave my son a ride to his retail sales job at the mall. Long lines of shivering people had formed outside Best Buy and Kohl’s. Parking lots at the major outlets were populated with idling cars. Sound the alarm! Just like Macbeth, Macy’s murders sleep!
MACBETH
Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more! Macys does murder sleep,” the innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of Ladies Charter Club Cashmere Crew-Neck Sweaters, only $39.99 before 10 am on Friday alone!LADY MACBETH
What do you mean? Who was it that thus cried?MACBETH
It was the owl that shriek’d, or some Tribune. The Star, perhaps, or the News of Duluth, formerly the Herald. It was a sorry sight.LADY MACBETH
A foolish thought to say a sorry sight. Such sales will make us mad! Summon again the page!MACBETH
All great Neptune’s ocean will not wash this ink clean from my hand. I am afraid to think what I have seen. Look on’t again I dare not.LADY MACBETH
Infirm of purpose! Methinks the doors are already open and the surfeited clerks do mock their charge with snores. Give me the plastic daggers. I’ll gild the aisles of Macy’s withal; That which hath made them drowsy hath made be bold; what hath pinched them hath given me fire. Hark!
What would Shakespeare write about today?
Trail Baboon 
wow, Dale – brilliant! i think your talents were dammed up into a huge pile while you were gone and this morning we get the benefits! thanks for the MacBeth – i like your version best. my favorite is Midsummer Night’s Dream – here is a short paragraph: (maybe changed a little 🙂
http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/midsummer/
In the forest, Oberon (the King of the curmudgeon shoppers) argues with Titania (the Black Friday Queen) that he should have her best sweater for the winter. Titania objects, asserting she is queen and willl keep that sweater for herself. To obtain the sweater (without shopping), Oberon orders the fairy Puck (aka Robin Goodfellow) to obtain a flower from Cupid that causes one to love the first sweater a person sees. Oberon plans to give it to Titania, so she’ll buy the first ugly sweater she finds and give him the best sweater. Demetrius and Helena appear, Helena pursuing him, and he fleeing her (she wants him to go to Macy’s at 3 a.m. but he wants it not). Puck arrives with the flower, and Oberon orders Puck to anoint Demetrius with it so he’ll take Helena shopping and let Oberon sleep, for gosh sakes.). Oberon then anoints Titania with the flower. In the forest, Lysander and Hermia lie down to rest, since they got up at zero dark thirty to join the crowds shopping. Puck, thinking Lysander is Demetrius, anoints him with the flower. Helena appears and awakes Lysander, who immediately takes her shopping. etc., etc. etc.
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gadzooks woman, thy brain ist driven by mad ferreting monkeys on this blackest of fridays mornings me thinks.
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Yes, Barb, I think this is exactly what Shakespeare would write today. Lots of good old scheming and anointing, with a bit of product placement thrown in. Well done!
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Sleepily—
And prais’d be sleepiness for it—let us know
Our inattention sometimes serves us well.
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Rise and Shine Babooners:
Methinks thou dost shop too much.
Methinks thou must go to the gym to rid thyselves of yesterdays feast.
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Is this a treadmill which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?
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thou art good at this linda, truely.
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verily
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i think bill would write about corporate backstabbing, suburban infidelities, lifes challanges here in the new millenium with finding ones place and sports. how bout them viikings.
a fine blog topic today dale. welcome back from csi. it is an awful place where the world outside is made up of thieves scoundrals and murderers. hey that is shakespeare isn’t it? my shoppers are back from the trenches where they found marvelous bargains and prices reduced down down down on humungous values at the outlet mall madness.
today is armatures day at the mall, liking going out drinking on new years eve. i have a daughter who works at the mall of america and she will be folding clothes all day.
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Yes to all these ideas, tim. And Denny Hecker too. Unless Shakespeare already had a Hecker somewhere, alongside Rosencrantz and Guildenstern perhaps.
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It’s 3:00am in Best Buy. Hell is empty and all the devils are here! I have eschewed early sho9pping and goest not forth from my chamber. Those who do must be great eater of beef, and that hath done harm to their wits.
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good one, Renee – i was thinking of going to the Ben Franklin in Sandstone…. have a coupon…. but will stay home. not enough beef lately, i guess
a good and gracious morning to You All
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Blessed morn to thee all on this day when Dale of Connelly is with us again,
I know not how I shall go forth. Shakespearian I am not.
My sleep they have not taken away. The black morn of Friday has not lured me by means of the evil plots of the merchants.
Me thinks Wall Street would serve as prime material for the bard.
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But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the north and Hansen Tree Farm is the sun.
Open up, fair Tree Farm and await the crowds
Who, already stuffed and sleepy from yesterday
Swing saws and other implements of destruction.
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Today is tree day? Truly? What guides your choice, Sherrilee, size, shape or price? When we did cut-your-own Christmas tree shopping, our decision was mostly about the outside temperature. The colder the day, the easier we were to satisfy.
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or maybe someone got Puck to annoint you so that you’d take the first ugly tree you saw?
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very nice, Sherrilee – find thee the tree of thy dreams.
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Verily Sherilee, tree day is upon thee
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ya gotta love verily sherrilee.
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Many thanks upon thy head, noble Knight.
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Morning!
Welcome back Dale! Ah… my Mother in Law can watch TV with your parents. There hasn’t been a crime drama she missed.
I’m not going to try Shakespeare… never my strong suit. Perhaps he could work in Reality TV with the unemployed?
Many years ago, I’m in the lightbooth for a local civic theater production of some Shakespeare show- might have been ‘Measure for Measure’… And a friend of ours, who was drinking before the show, in the middle of the show turns to her husband and LOUDLY asks, “What the F— IS GOING ON?”
I was just reading Russ Ringsak’s latest story:
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/prairiehome/russ/2010/11/13/
Nothing to do with Shakespeare either… but I always enjoy his writings.
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out of the mouths of babes – i’ve often wanted to say just that. HA! thanks for the good laugh, Ben.
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My wife reminds me she was actually in that show and it was ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’… She said she tried to put it out of her memory… mine too I guess.
What I do remember is her and another actor moving a platform during a scene change and they couldn’t find the spike marks. Moved that platform all over the stage practically trying to find their marks! Kelly would pull it this way, the other lady would pull it that way… up, down, left right… in the booth I was having a fit of giggles… I think they finally just parked it askew and got off the stage.
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Surely you don’t expect actors to place scenery perfectly? 🙂 It’s tough setting up and moving stuff in total darkness. I remember they taught us to count to 10 with our eyes closed before we opened them to move scenery in the dark — it helped.
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Welcome back Dale.
I don’t think William would write because he’s stuck in the long checkout line for doorbuster sales at Quills R Us.
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to sleep, perchance to dream? not a hope when the cousins are expected later today. s&h was up and raring to go before 6am. Nice work everyone, my Shakespeare is clearly lacking by comparison, but I know it when I see it.
I would not want to run into Falstaff at the MOA, just sayin’.
Are there stores open today?
I am busily hunting up bargains on family history (like the fact that the preface of my phone number is the same as my grandpa’s old milk route number-thanks Dad!)
S&h has learned cribbage from Grandpa and later today I teach him and the nephews Michigan Rummy, the game we always played with my grandma and her sibs (I won’t be throwing in the schmutzy-deutsch muttered curse words, I’m thinking).
I’m off for a little hike to Lake Macbride before I tuck into a nice cold turkey sandwich!
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my cribbage memories are wonderful. my great grandfather would sit in the middle of the living room at the cribbage table and chat and reminiss. it was how i got to know him and that airladen indian speech pattern i hear when i hear native americans speak today. i also had an ongoing game with a good friend where we would move the total to the next date on the callander. we quit at some point when it was obvious he was better than me and was ahead 25oo to 2100 or something like that. enjoy the cousins.
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I learned a new cooking term the other day that sounds quite Elizabethan. I was instructed to bard a beef rump roast the other day. Any guesses what it means? I had to look it up.
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either layer bacon on it or make slits and insert fat things?
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You are correct- It means to wrap it in fat. Larding consists of injecting the meat with fat and/or flavor, and is completely different from barding. I’m glad it doesn’t mean that you have to compose a sonnet about the meat.
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Shall I compare thee to a sirloin steak?
Thou art more marbled and more tenderized…
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we found your calling linda. you are on today girl!!
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yea, thou speakst well, Linda
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snorting tea right now!
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I’ve had an aversion to Shakespeare my whole life, so when my daughter-in-law took on the lead role in Macbeth, I felt obliged to try it one more time. She’s a well-loved & respected Guthrie actress and has her own theater company. Through her, I’ve fallen completely in love with SMALL theater because it’s just so intimate and engaging. My thought was, “If I’m ever to appreciate Shakespeare, watching her in the lead role in such a tiny space will win me over”. I sat through this dreary, depressing play trying to decipher the odd language being used and emerged disliking Shakespeare even more. Maggie (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and Blanche (Streetcar Named Desire) were also rather depressing plot-wise, but at least I could fully understand the language!
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I started my children on Shakespeare pretty young and they have a appreciation for it now. I remember my son was about 8 when he excitedly announced to the neighbors that we were going to watch Henry V (the Kenneth Branaugh that evening. Of course, it marked him as the weirdest kid in town, but he still loves the plays.
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one of my favorite aspects about shakespeare is how totally foreign it sounds when you sit down in your seats. the cadence the pronunciation the interplay of the words take my total concentration and before i know it i have become immersed and understand the words the jokes the chioce of words not because of the words but because of how they bop d bop along on your tounge in relation to the other words in the stanza. that and how i don’t see barbara streisands nose at the end of a barbara streisand movie are tow of the true wonders of the universe. i do like depressing a lot cat on a hot tin roof and streetcar are two of my favorites. thanks for pointing it out crystal bay. i can search out depressing now that i know i enjoy it so much. maybe especially depressing with difficult accents and phrasing huh? i think i’ll drive nails through my hands and feet later too.
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i think theater needs the “champagne edition” of dialogue for Shakespeare, just as we had in Lonnie Durham’s class at the U. the pages (in this really HUGE book of the complete works) were littered with little bubbles which directed one to a definition of the word. could they, when they spoke a joke we might not understand, have a little bubble pop up above their heads with the explanation, maybe?
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Tim, please try to avoid the impluse to drive any nails into your body. Your implusive nature makes you interesting, but you shouldn’t get too carried away with it. This is my advice as one of the advice giving Dr. Babooners.
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Oops, I mean impulsive, implusive.
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thanks for the thought but i now have this great new line of hand jewelry for pierced hands and feet. its an untapped market. virtually no competition
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I was required to read Shakespear in high school and wasn’t ready at that age to get much out of it. That early experience with Shakespear has left me with a negative attitude toward this author. I have enjoyed going to some productions of Shakespear plays, but have never been very interested to reading or studying Shakespear. I might be slightly less negative toward the bard from participating in this blog today.
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I love watching the Reduced Shakespeare Company do most of the plays with only three men. It’s very funny, and I think you can find them on DVD.
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Having been involved in a number of the Bard’s plays, I gotta say, I’m generally a fan. That said, it doesn’t take much to make Shakespeare completely incomprehensible to the average person. There is a troupe that I have worked with that does Shakespeare outdoors in the summer (they perform on the campus of Century College) – one thing they do well, even if the acting is sometimes uneven, is manage to make Shakespeare sound like regular conversation. It was a passion for the man who started the troupe, and a tradition carried on by those who learned from him.
Also helps to read ’em out loud, if you’re just trying to read. This was a trick I learned from a family friend who had kept himself entertained at a job he had in the oil fields of Texas by reading to the cattle in the nearby pasture when he was waiting for the equipment to do its thing so he could do his next engineering task. The cattle seemed non-plussed, but Shakespeare with a slight Texas twang had to have been unique.
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I’m feeling too mellow after a lovely Thanksgiving to corrupt anyone’s image of Shakespeare with my imitation of him. Or put it this way: I’ll parody Shakespeare’s writing style only if he first does the same to mine.
As near as I can tell, everyone who has a special claim on my heart had a delightful Thanksgiving. That’s something to be thankful for.
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Lo, we have returned! A HUGE Scotch pine that was about the size of our car and required major renovation to get into the tree stand.
Dale, in answer to your question… we gravitate toward those tree farms that have the longer needles trees (Scotch or Norway pines are our two favorites) as well as the “amenities”. A nice fire, hopefully with sticks for searing your veggie dogs, hot cocoa, haywagon, Santa… all good things in our world. I have to admit that I was not as fussy this year about the tree because my mother, who doesn’tlike the cold much, was with us. But the fire was very nice.
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Today the local paper had an article about “hoards” of shoppers hitting the stores early in the morning. I love bad editing when it is funny.
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I’m not being coy here, but how is the correct word spelled?????
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It is spelled horde. Hoard is a verb.
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we are amidst english folk here crystal bay, other than that they seem ok though.
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Well, there is a big difference between “the Mongol Hordes” and “the Mongols hoard” The latter require mental health intervention.
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Wow! I never new that before!
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Y’all have been making me laugh – which makes me think that if Shakespeare were alive today, he’d probably be writing stuff like Tom Stoppard. Which gets me to:
Rosencrantz (or is it Guildenstern): Would you like to play at shopping?
Guildenstern: How do you play that?
R: Waiting.
G: Statement, one love.
R: Cheating! You butted in line!
G: Statement, two love.
R: Are you buying that?
G: What?
R: Are you buying that?
G: Foul, no repetition, three love.
R: Of course it’s foul, it’s an ugly sweater…
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Greetings, gentle readers! A bonny day was had by all, yes? We traveled through hill and dale to two separate Thanksgivings, and spent the night at hospitable, but crowded sister’s house.
We just returned home an hour or so ago. Another great day on the blog, you guys are so clever. I”m not feeling clever or much of anything. Tired from too much food, too much fun and sitting in car for a couple hours.
As a theater major, I slogged through Shakespeare and made a point to understand the language a little better, but yes it is difficult. My favorite film version is “Much Ado About Nothing” with Emma Thompson, Kenneth Branagh, Keanu Reeves and Denzel Washington. A very lush, sensual, rustic movie — lovely to watch. The opening scene is awesome. The men are traveling home by horseback from war, all dirty and dusty. As they get close, they stop at a clear pond and go skinny-dipping, having a splashing good time. Now they look all clean, manly and handsome in their uniforms on horseback. The young women waiting for their arrival, see them in distance and rush to the gorgeous Italian villa to change into pretty things and beautify themselves for the men. It’s a glorious scene with an amazing setting in the Italian countryside, I believe. And somehow, British actors can make Shakespeare sound more like understandable conversation. Well, I’m just rambling now … later —
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i love shakespeare live in theater but the film versions with the exception of a hamlet i saw from maybe 10 years a go left me wanting. i like branaugh ( i think it may have been his hamlet ) and emma thompson and those lush countryside scenes with the dark lighting and the soft filters they use for pretty european pallette cinematography tendencies. i’ll give it a try. thanks for the review.
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dales return to the blog has us speaking in rhyme
and thinking in shakespearean verse
me thinkith mine brain hast been too stretched this time
for my shakespearean tounge is the worst
barbara from blackhoof starts us off on our blog
sherrilee celebrates tree day with son
comes home with a monster the trunk is a log
the needles are long on this one
and beth ann critiques misspelling of headlines
russ ringsack agrees in a way
mpr is a class act so you must just dread lines
that show english is in decay
jim only sorta likes shakespear maybe more so from here what we say
crystal bay doesn’t like the bard not at all, so be it cb, what the hey.
linda me thinks has found her true voice
spake she of treadmill handles and marbleized steaks
in a shakespearean lilt with a careful word choice
our standard speech pattern it breaks
steve is high on tryptophan
hes way laid back today
his buds are good so he gives thanks man
but for him that seems little to say
renees raising geek children who appreciate the classics
the’ll be nodaks with no where to turn
old bill write those sories where half the cast gets their ass kicked
what the f… ben your wife seems concerned
mig post on the blogged of her cuzzins and their cribbage game also got on it
anna reads them out loud with a west texas twang and that is the end of my sonnet
renee’s kids are cultured dodaks geek artlovers
annas rewitres the local in of r & g covers
and jacque between excersize and
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i just realized i left my crib notes at the bottom and i shoul include joanne but tough tomatos joanne i’ll get cha nextime
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TIM!! (I mean that in a good way)
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jacque had you in there and then rejockied you to make the rhyme work and out you went. get you next time too
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You have more fun with words than anyone else I know, Tim! You must have had parents who took the “use your words, Timmy” very seriously?
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The sonnet is so much fun. Thanks. I don’t know where you get the energy!
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The price of leaving those of us listed at the bottom in crib notes will be seperate, lengthy poems for each of us, extolling our many virtues. The virtues can be fictional.
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jacques poem reqest
first thing in the morning
has affected the start of my day
when i woke up
i had plans of my own
but i feel jacque deserves her own way
she has been such a champion
of community causes
and to youth a divine guiding light
she has honors bestolling her
compliments extolling her
she keeps going til she gets it right.
the art of living
as shes always taught
is simply to be there and shine
shes shone by example
that this is her mantra
shes gotten it right every time
now she and renee
blog most every day
and they make our reading a delight
renee lives in dakota
and yesterday wrote a
variation on themes that reached heights
never before dreamed of
we’d never seen creamed of
the crop thoughts like that days or nights.
she started like faust
when best buy she did oust
with 3 am shopping from hell
then she barded a rump roast
then spoke of her child most
artistically reared, he’ll do well
then she spoke of enjoyment
in reduced employment
takes a shakspearean troop down to three
that she can do this
without the obvious
required matching soup spoons just floors me
joanne is our trooper
her attitude’s super
she rides a storm like a sailor
shes got a new job
with the thermonuclear mob
now she gets her big checks in a mailer
from her new house she learned
how a sows ear is turned
into todays proverbial silk purse
lifes all what you make it
enjoy it or fake it
and try to make better from worse
im glad is just missed three
or at least i just list three
i’d thought about clyde but got busy
hes a regular feature
and one of our teachers
but hes not hard to right about is he
shakespeares right up his alley
maybe today he will rally
and do a number on the bard
i mean bill i should say
thanks to renee yesterday
he may end up writing about lard
then on to the hordes
who the mongals adored
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I will have this virtually needlepointed and put on the wall of the blog’s virtual den.
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anna rewrite got left off again
rosenkrantz and guilderstern coming round the bend
in common bloglike discussion,
sounds much less like russian
than the originally spoken word blend
anna brings such to the group
that we all stir primordial soup
the discussion gets strong
whenever that bird comes along
pops down off her perch into our coop
we are a fine group i’m do see
a the wold is bette that we
can all join together
and enjoy talk and weather
and coffee or wine or some tea.
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